Noida (Uttar Pradesh) [India], August 17 (ANI): Amid a row over NCERT’s new module on Partition Horrors Remembrance Day, the Director (Research and Administration) of the Indian Council of Historical Research, Om Jee Upadhyay, said that the new generation should know the truth about the tragedy.
Speaking to ANI on Saturday, Upadhyay said that around 1.5 crore people were forced to cross borders and 12-15 lakh people were killed during Partition.
“The new generation should know how we had suffered the sting of Partition… Partition was not a normal incident, but it is one of the most tragic incidents of history, where 1.5 crore people were forced to cross boundaries. 12-15 lakh people were brutally murdered… When we were fighting for independence, none of the freedom fighters thought that something like this would happen…The new generation should know the truth so that they can learn from it and ensure that such incidents don’t happen in the future,” he said.
The new NCERT module, released to mark Partition Horrors Remembrance Day on August 14, holds Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the Congress, and then Viceroy Lord Mountbatten responsible for Partition.
Citing Hudson’s book The Great Divide, Upadhyay pointed to Mountbatten’s role, saying he hurried the process.
Upadhyay said, “If we talk about people responsible, Mountbatten came to India on March 22, 1947, with the task to grant independence to India before June 30, 1948. He did it in haste, which he has accepted in his interviews, but holds Indian leaders and the public responsible. Hudson has written about Mountbatten’s meetings with Indian leaders in his book ‘The Great Divide’, which should be read.”
On the Congress party’s role, he said they had the authority to take decisions at the time and eventually accepted Partition as inevitable.
“During that time, who had the right to make decisions? … Why do we hold Mahatma Gandhi responsible? Because at that time, he was the biggest voice. He had always insisted that partition would be his last option… During that time, the sequence of events clearly indicates that the leadership of Congress had given up and accepted partition as its destiny,” he said.
Earlier on Saturday, BJP spokesperson Shehzad Poonawalla said the Partition was not just a result of communal demands but also a compromise overseen by the Congress leadership at the time.
“I want to ask Congress…Who had the power to stop this at the last moment? … Everyone knows the two-nation theory, which was implemented by Congress and Muhammad Ali Jinnah,” BJP spokesperson Shehzad Poonawalla said.
He linked the debate to contemporary politics, alleging that Congress continues to push a divisive approach. “Congress still talks about Muslim first and the partition of India…” he said.
This came after Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera strongly criticised NCERT’s module. Alleging that the government is “distorting” history, Khera said the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh was the “greatest villain”.
“Set this book (module) on fire if it doesn’t contain all of this. This is the reality. The Partition happened due to the collaboration between the Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League. If there is any greatest villain in history, it is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS),” Khera said in a press conference. (ANI)
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